


“Groot!”- Nice To Meet A New Old Friend

by Fighting_for_Creativity



Series: The Groot, Rocket And Tony Show [2]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Timetravel, Adorable Groot (Marvel), Gen, Humor, Kid Tony Stark, Little bit of Fluff, Rocket Raccoon-centric, Swearing, Tony Stark is a genius, just like little bit of humor I guess, non graphic gun fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24495709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fighting_for_Creativity/pseuds/Fighting_for_Creativity
Summary: Rocket and Groot are stranded. Both on a backwards planet, and in a long ago past.
Relationships: Groot & Rocket Raccoon
Series: The Groot, Rocket And Tony Show [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1895845
Comments: 4
Kudos: 121
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo 2020





	“Groot!”- Nice To Meet A New Old Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo, **finally** I had an idea for my bingo square Groot.
> 
> This is it.
> 
> TSB Fill  
> Title: “Groot!”- Nice To Meet A New Old Friend  
> Collaborator Name: Fighting_for_Creativity  
> Card Number: 3113  
> Square filled: A4 Groot

Being stranded was a shit fest Rocket abhorred. Quill had accepted this stupid, questionable protection job and Gamora had _gently_ encouraged (read: aggressively polished her weapons while eyeing the team up) everyone to join and do their good deeds or some shit. Rocket wasn’t listening too closely, as he was still marveling at the weaponized arm the Terran princess and her herald - “no, I don’t care if your name is something ridiculous like Bucky” - had given him.

In hindsight, Rocket maybe should have listened to his teammates a little better. 

  
  


They wandered around the seemingly abandoned base. Something was very off, and Rocket didn’t like it. 

“Quill, what was the mission again?”, Gamora asked suspiciously. 

‘ _Good_ ,’ Rocket thought, ‘ _at least someone is still thinking!’_

“Ah, just protecting someone. We’re supposed to meet up with them around here somewh-” Quill didn’t get to finish, because that’s when the bad guys chose to attack.

“Groot!” exclaimed Groot as he barely avoided being shot.

“Yeah, you big piece of lumber, very rude!” Rocket pulled his guns from their holder and shot right back. Throughout the firefight, the group of Guardians got split up, until Rocket was left with only Groot for company. Somehow, and Rocket didn’t think he’d never find out how, they found themselves in a strange underground bunker.

The last of their pursuers didn’t fit in the tunnel system and therefore Groot and Rocket were safe for the moment. The small creature looked around and then just shrugged. It didn’t matter where they were at the moment, only that they found their group of misfits again. So, despite feeling the urge to rummage through all the crates around the cramped area, Rocket concentrated on mapping the way out. Just as he wanted to point out that they should try to get back up, the stone ceiling came down and cut off their way out. “Crap.”

“Groot.” The tree looked forlornly to the pile of rocks.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Gruhoot.” The off put exclamation got a bit more of Rocket's attention, distracting him from rummaging through the crates to find anything that could help them.

“I know, I know. Stop whining you big baby,” he answered with a side glance towards Groot, who stood beside some kind of reactor. When nothing else followed that, Rocket returned to the task at hand.

A few minutes ticked by before, “Groot?”

Rocket turned around now, annoyed, and started to say, “Listen buddy, I have no idea what this reac-” before he really looked at the reactor and startled. 

“Holy-” He didn’t get to finish his swear. Because in that moment Groot had grabbed onto the reactor while Rocket let two small egg-like spheres drop. 

  
The moment the spheres touched the ground and Groot the reactor, there was a blinding light and a soft bam sound, as if a door was slammed from far far away. 

Where just a second ago two Guardians were exploring, was now nothing.

-

Everything was dark. Rocket wondered if he had gone blind from the light emitted from what he was pretty sure had been an attempted copy of the Arc Reactor. Since the larger universe heard of the Avengers, since they heard of Tony Stark, the man who bested Thanos and lived to tell the tale, the whole universe had gone bonkers trying to reverse engineer all of Stark’s tech. No freaking matter what. Some of the Guardians’ more recent missions had actually been favors for Stark to retrieve stolen items.

“oot...Groot… Groot! GROOT!”

That startled Rocket enough to jump awake. “You complete pile of-”

“Groot!”

“I don’t care if my insult is rude. Insults are supposed to be rude and-”

“Groo-uh-oot!” The worry in his oldest friend's voice let the anger dissipate.

“Yes, I’m fine. Thank you. God. Are you ok, buddy?” The weapons fanatic looked Groot up and down, checking for himself if his friend was fine. When Rocket found no trace of physical harm he looked around, trying to figure out where they were. 

‘ _This place is… green. A lot of trees, non sentient, at least by the look of it. A lot of other plants. I have the feeling I know them… strange_.’

“Hey, big twig,” Rocket started, while getting up and dusting himself off. He picked up the spheres which, by the looks of it, seemed to be shorted out. He fiddled with them for a while, but without most of his tech and not exactly knowing what they were, Rocket didn’t want to risk the spheres exploding or ripping apart the universe or whatever the mad scientist of the week had come up with. 

Realizing that he hadn’t gotten any reaction from Groot, his eyes returned to his best friend. 

“Groot?” the raccoon asked, but he could see that Groot was staring into the distance. Confused, Rocket followed his gaze.

The moment his eyes landed on the same thing Groot’s were transfixed too, Rocket cursed violently.

-

Admittedly, their first meet and greet could have gone better. Rocket wasn’t egocentric enough to pretend a great part of that wasn’t his fault.

When Rocket’s brain registered the close proximity of a very human child staring at them, the first thing he did was draw his gun. Groot had been pissed at him and the child - well, the child simply blinked and calmly (and how fucked up is a child’s life for them to be calm in the face of a gun) held up his arms in a universal sign of surrender.

They stared at each other until Rocket started to lose his patience. “What do ya want, kiddo?”

“Groot!”

“Oh shut it, Groot.”

The child blinked for a moment but then shrugged, seemingly accepting a talking Racoon and anthropomorphized tree with ease most adults didn’t possess.

“I’m not here to harm you. I just saw a bright light on the edge of the forest. Mamma and I arrived today, and she said I should get to know the yard and stuff, maybe play outside a bit. But I actually wanted to fix my robocat but yeah- well,” and he jiggled his body a bit. Faint clattering sounds could be heard, and Rocket motioned for the kid to come closer. 

When the brown-haired, brown-eyed - ‘ _damn, I feel like I know those eyes_ ’ - was close enough, Groot extended one of his finger twigs and tried to take the bag. The child immediately seemed to forget the raccoon with the gun - _still trained at the child's chest -_ and snatched it right back and held it close to himself. 

“That’s not nice! It’s not yours. It’s mine! If you want to know what’s in I’ll show you, but you can’t take it!”

Rocket pondered the child's words. Then he looked at Groot, who just blinked back at him. With a shrug, Rocket pocketed his gun and took a step closer. “Show us then. You said something about a robocat?”

“Yes!” The child's whole face transformed. Where it had been innocent and calm, it was now vibrant with excitement and… hope?

After setting down the bag, the child opened one of the compartments and pulled out something which could become a robocat one day if the child continued. Groot was intrigued and stepped closer, asking: “Groot?”

His big, round eyes gleaming with excitement, the child started to babble. Rocket listened closely and was surprised by all the mechanical and engineering knowledge. While Groot and the kid had kind of a conversation (as in, Groot exclaimed his interest and his astonishment and the kid continued babbling about all the other things he had plans for), Rocket contemplated the spheres. 

“Hey, kid-” Rocket was once again interrupted, and he questioned the life choices that had brought him here.

“You know, I do have a name.”

“Yeah, yeah. Probably. Anyway. You said you’re good with tech?”

That made the kid’s chest swell with pride, his brown eyes sparkle with joy, and his lips split into a pleased grin, “Yep!” The brunet popped the ‘p’, while the word alone conveyed pride and confidence.

If he hadn’t seen as much as he had the past years, Rocket would have scoffed. As it was, the weapons fanatic just handed over the spheres and said, “Can you repair these?”

The boy took the deceives gingerly and inspected them. “What are they?”

“Dunno, kiddo. They got us here, though. So we need them to get back.”

“Oh, ok. Don’t worry, Mr. Raccoon, I think I can do that!” The kid sat on the ground, opening another compartment of his bag. He looked into it and soon pulled out an ancient looking toolkit and some scrap metal.   
  
‘ _What the hell is a kid doing with scrap metal and- is that a gas torch?_ ’

-

A few hours passed and Rocket was on edge. The kid had run off to the house in the distance a couple of times, and brought new materials back with him every time. Whenever he got to what seemed to be a tricker part of his repairs, the brunet would start to mumble equations and then say something about ‘bending physics’ and ‘time travel is a fantasy not reality’.

If Rocket was honest with himself, he found it quite adorable. Still, they had spent hours and the boy had taken apart one of the spheres completely. ‘ _If he isn’t putting it together soon, I’ll have to take it away from him and try my luck again._ ’

The exact second Rocket decided to do just that, the brunet fist bumped the air and excitedly yelled, “Gotcha! Geez! Finally figured you out, you bastard!” Then he started to say things like ‘that part goes here, this turns there, that wire needs to cross under-’ and doubled down on the work.   
  
In the blink of an eye, the child stood with his arm outstretched, palm up, and on it sat one completely repaired sphere.

The raccoon was speechless and could only stare at the child, while Groot moved forward and hugged the apparent genius. When Rocket found his voice again he demanded that the boy handed over the sphere. A short inspection showed that it was indeed fully functional again, at least if the lights and symbols were to be believed. 

After the first sphere was repaired, the second didn’t take long at all. Soon Rocket held two repaired spheres in his paws and looked at the child with something akin to astonishment. For a few precious moments, the raccoon let Groot and the kid play with each other. 

‘ _The smile on his face looks familiar. It’s pretty shitty that we can’t take him with us. But maybe we can visit in the near future? I think Groot would like that. And honestly, me too._ ’

“Hey kiddo,” Rocket studied the child who had repaired the device that was their way home.

“What is it, Mr. Raccoon?” the child asked, slightly chubby cheeks still dimpled by the big grin on his face. His hazelnut eyes were still so familiar, and filled with an intelligence far beyond the child's age.

“Thanks. I guess I kinda own you something. What’s your name, kiddo?”

Suddenly the kid turned bashful, patting Groot to let him down. With a reluctant, “Groooot,” which Rocket mentally translated into _I don’t want to let you go_ , the big oaf set the child gently on the floor.

“Uhm, actually… You don’t own me anything, Mr. Raccoon. I had fun repairing the thingy for you. Mr. Groot played with me. That was fun, too. We’re square. And, erm… My name is Tony. Well, actually, Anthony Edward Stark, but everyone calls me Tony.”

Rocket felt his blood freeze. He saw the same happen with Groot, or whatever the equivalent to blood was with the Flora Colossus. That bright, yet very shy kid, was the same man who...?

In a rare moment of showing his true affection, Rocket ruffled the kid’s hair. “Well, then kiddo. Time for us to go home. And time for you to do great.”

“Groot!”

“C’mon, you leek, time to get home.”

“Groot…”

“Goodbye, Mr. Groot. Goodbye, Mr. Raccoon. It was nice to meet you. Take care!” Anthony smiled, waving his hand at them.

Rocket and Groot turned their devices on. Before they were whisked away, the raccoon whispered, “We own you more than you think, kiddo. Thank you.”

\---

Tony stood for a while where the two strange beings had been. Sure, he had been the one to repair their even stranger tech, but Tony had thought it was just some game or joke gadget. A cool breeze ruffled his hair even more and from the distance of the holiday manor he heard his mother calling.

Tucking this strange chance meeting away in the depths of his mind, Tony raced back towards the big house. The next morning, he dismissed everything as a strange dream, the result of reading too many comic books.


End file.
